Why we must be so careful about not jumping to conclusions

Not every priest accused of sexual abuse is guilty.

Read the whole story at Catholic Online.

“Father Murphy is coming down from a long period of turmoil,” said his attorney Timothy O’Neill. “Unfortunately, the institution’s been fighting to protect itself, not the individual priest.”

“But to be fair, the church has been totally overwhelmed by the number and extent of abuse claims,” O’Neill said. “I’m not denying the holocaust, but you can feel pretty helpless when you’re removed from ministry and you know you didn’t do anything. These guys are pretty much on their own.”

The accusations made national news when the story broke. He and 14 others were named in a civil suit that claimed alleged abuse of students at the Boston School for the Deaf between 1944 and 1977. Father Murphy, who is hearing-impaired, served as director of counseling there in the 1970s.

All the claims were later withdrawn or dismissed by the court. But the story of Father Murphy’s exoneration by the church made only local news. It rated a brief release in The Pilot, Boston’s archdiocesan paper.

According to the archdiocese’s Office of Child Advocacy, 71 complaints were filed against Boston-area priests from July 2003 to December 2005. In 32 of those cases, the review board did not find that probable cause of sexual abuse of a minor had occurred.

The norms of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops state: “When an accusation has been shown to be unfounded, every step possible will be taken to restore the good name of the person falsely accused.”

Boston archdiocesan spokesman Terrence Donilon and review board members declined to explain what steps are taken to restore a priest’s reputation.

“We call it the Humpty-Dumpty restoration process,” said one Boston priest. Another said, “That policy is just lip service.”

The defendants’ attorneys in the Boston School for the Deaf cases had portrayed the plaintiffs as “opportunists trying to cash in on publicity surrounding the $85 million paid in 2003 by the archdiocese to victims of clergy sexual abuse,” according to The Patriot Ledger, a suburban Boston paper. At the time of that record settlement, Forbes magazine noted, “Litigators have parlayed the priest crisis into a billion-dollar money machine. Lawyers are lobbying states to lift the statute of limitations on sex abuse cases, letting them dredge up complaints that date back decades.”

“Father Murphy’s case was totally without substance,” said O’Neill. He was first charged just with walking into a room where a girl was changing. When it was obvious that charge would get dismissed, O’Neill said, the same woman then later filed another claim charging the priest had fondled her.